BBC Proms 2022: Prom 62 - Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (BPO / K. Petrenko)

3rd September 2022
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom

MAHLER Symphony No. 7

Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)



Berliner Philharmoniker. Kirill Petrenko. Mahler 7. Holy mama, how do I even begin? Spoiler alert: full house standing ovation. In 2016, Simon Rattle and the BPO performed M7 here at the Proms. I decided to give it a miss because I did not understand the work and feared it would give me a lasting wrong impression. Immediately after that, I made the effort to listen to it every day for a month and then finally a crack opened. Today, it's a full circle moment that the BPO returned with M7 and their new chief. It's the most puzzling of Mahler symphonies, not only because of the unusual orchestral timbres that call for cowbells, guitar and mandolin, but primarily because it's a work of irony and ambiguity. Taken on the surface, it's a nice depiction of the night - the joy, anguish and mystery of it, ending with a triumphant welcome to the morning - but the merrier the waltz is in the middle, the more tragic it gets. Putting everything in context and consideration, it's an emotionally complex work. The BPO cannot sound more different under the baton of Petrenko than his predecessor. He is an animated conductor with mannerisms like Carlos Kleiber. He virtually danced through the whole symphony and there was no evidence supporting the fact that he recently suffered from a foot injury. He had total command over the silvery sound of BPO and made a consistently fluid account of the symphony. There was this childlike purity in the Nachtmusik movements and deliberate banality in the Scherzo that added to the irony and made it haunting. The celestial middle movements made you want to stay in the moment forever. There are so many spectacular moments in the solos, dialogues and generally throughout it's impossible to list them all. Some probably think the finale is too fast, but the virtuosity of the orchestra was something to behold. The BPO is really the best orchestra in the world. For £6 I got to have the entire BPO first violins blasting in my face for 90 minutes. That's the magic of the Proms.